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Football fans get a close-up in 'Silver Linings'

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Modified: November 30, 2012 at 3:18 pm •
Published: November 30, 2012

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NEW YORK (AP) — In David O. Russell's "Silver Linings Playbook," Bradley Cooper plays an unstable former teacher trying to improve himself after exiting a mental institution. When his character, Pat Solitano, consults his otherwise level-headed psychiatrist Dr. Cliff Patel (Anupam Kher) on whether a Philadelphia Eagles' jersey is appropriate attire for a dinner party, Patel questions which jersey. On hearing that it's star wide-receiver DeSean Jackson, he responds unequivocally:

This undated publicity film image provided by The Weinstein Company shows Bradley Cooper playing Pat Solatano in a scene from the film, "Silver Linings Playbook." The film was recently nominated for five Spirit Awards and is widely expected to be a best picture Oscar contender. (AP Photo/The Weinstein Company, JoJo Whilden)

"DeSean Jackson is the man."

This is Philadelphia, where undying loyalty to the local NFL team — "the Birds" — is everywhere, even in the sensitive relations between therapist and patient.

As large a role as football plays in American life, Hollywood has typically focused its cameras on the field of play, where the dramatics of gridiron battle are self-evident. But "Silver Linings Playbook," which was recently nominated for five Spirit Awards and is widely expected to be a best picture Oscar contender, is more interested in the face-painters in the stands.

The annals of pigskin pictures have ranged from the hijinks of Groucho Marx ("Horse Feathers") to the inspiration of a newcomer to the sport ("The Blind Side"). Football in movies has been a regular source of hard-knock action ("Any Given Sunday"), manly tragedy ("Brian's Song," ''Remember the Titans") and underdog triumph ("Rudy").

But along with "Silver Linings Playbook," a handful of films have sought to capture the fanatical passion — both the communal spirit and the toxic obsession — that grips millions of households and acres of parking-lot asphalt every Sunday this time of year.

In Vincent Gallo's "Buffalo '66" (1998), Gallo drew from his own childhood in the upstate New York city, playing a man named after the hometown team (Billy), with lifeless parents glued to the TV screen for Buffalo Bills games. A lost bet on a crucial game cost Billy $10,000 and put him in jail. On his exit, he's bent on avenging the guilty place kicker, a fictionalized version of a real-life Bills scapegoat, kicker Scott Norwood.

"Big Fan" (2009), written and directed by Robert D. Siegel (who also wrote "The Wrestler"), depicted a die-hard New York Giants fan (Patton Oswalt) whose devotion is tested when he's brutally assaulted by his favorite player.

The 2004 film "Friday Night Lights," and the subsequent TV series, sought to portray a football-mad Texas town, where the sport reverberated in nearly all that was good — and all that was bad — in Dillon, Texas.

These movies all share in the spirit of Frederick Exley's classic 1968 fictional memoir, "A Fan's Notes." The Giants-loving author wrote: "Cheering is a paltry description. The Giants were my delight, my folly, my anodyne, my intellectual stimulation. ... I gave myself up to the Giants utterly. The recompense I gained was the feeling of being alive."

It was that kind of intensity that interested Russell, whose last film, "The Fighter," captured the boxing community of Lowell, Mass.